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Monday, May 2, 2011

Writing a letter to the child you gave up for adoption

Lorraine
How do you write a letter to the son or daughter you gave up for adoption? Before you know her/him? How to begin, what to say? It's a question first/birth mothers are faced with if they must make contact through a confidential intermediary. At the end of my memoir, Birthmark, I have a letter to the daughter I did not know yet--she was thirteen at the time the book was published in 1979, and as many of you know, I did reunite with her less than three years later. No letter was necessary, I made a phone call and spoke to her adoptive mother, and then her adoptive father, and within ten minutes or so my daughter was on the line. Yep. That was, in a sense, the easy part.

But what would I say today if I had to write such a letter? How would I introduce myself?
People sometimes write and ask for help composing this most difficult of letters, and so I sat down and wrote how I might write such a letter today, hoping that it will help some of the first mothers confronted with this task. There is some identifying information in this letter that might not pass muster, but my attitude is, put it in and let the CI be in the position of taking it out. I have heard many stories about redacted birth and adoption documents in which one telling name or place or other detail was missed, and that was the clue that led the person to find the other. So, do not be scrupulous about avoiding every detail, put them in. Some may get through.

Furthermore, what is identifying to one person may seem to be non-identifying to another CI, especially one who is sympathetic to search-and-reunion. For instance, in my sample letter below I mention that my daughter's father was an older man and a political reporter on the Democrat & Chronicle newspaper in Rochester. Well, that could be one of several people--local politics? national? the suburbs or the city? At the time she was born, there were two newspapers in Rochester, and so I could reasonably argue that there had to be a number of people who covered politics then, on the two papers, and so that would be identifying and might be permissible to be included. You never know what might get through.

And to the adoptees reading, I ask for your advice. Anything I left out? Please add it in the comments, or tell us about letters you have received and what you liked or disliked about them.

Check List for writing to your son or daughter who was adopted:
  • Say that you have never forgotten your child; that you are writing in love, and do not want to interfere in their lives but would very very much welcome him or her in yours. 
  • The adoptee will want first of all to know why she was given up for adoption, so tell that briefly but leave gory details (if there are any) for later in a face-to-face meeting or telephone conversation. 
  • If you can recall a detail about the time of the birth that is comforting to you and will be telling to the adoptee, include it.  (See forsythia.)
  • Include the circumstances of the birth that you can remember--specific time, weight, height, whether baptized on the spot, what your baby looked like if you saw him or her, name of hospital. Like all of us, your child will be eager to learn about himself.
  • Let her know if the other members of your family know about him or her, and if they do not, what you intend to do (tell them!) if the adoptee responds positively. 
  • Then include personal information about yourself: education, occupation, talents, preferences, marital status, whether you had other children, a physical description--adoptees are eager to find someone who looks like them and shares any traits and talents.
  •  If you have had a difficult life (drug addiction, alcoholism, prison) or if the child is the result of a rape, you might hold back these details until you meet, or have more contact.
  • Do not write disparagingly about the adoptee's biological father, or infer anything bad about adoption or adoptive parents in general. The time for exploring these topics is later.
  • You may express your personal sorrow for the fact of the adoption itself that is separate from explaining (briefly) why you surrendered. Simply expressing that you are sorry your son or daughter had to be adopted without saying the times/my parents/the social worker/the devil etc. made you do it acknowledges not only your grief and role in the surrender, but expresses sympathy to the adopted person without assuming additional blame and guilt. It shouldn't be a slavish apology, but one that acknowledges that being adopted is not the same as being raised in one own's family. You want merely to express a tender feeling, i.e.,  I'm sorry you were adopted. That's it.
  • To give the individual an idea of you personally, write it by hand rather rather than type it. Write in cursive script neat enough to read. 
  • Keep the tone sincere and thoughtful. Make it reflect you as a person. Remember, you are introducing yourself to someone who has no knowledge of you except that you gave her life.
  • Don't write more than two pages--unless your handwriting is large and loose. (My sample below must run to two pages.) You want to welcome your child, not overwhelm. (Having said that, I don't know really how long the sample letter I've written would run.)
  • Do not sign the letter "Mom" or "your mother" no matter how much you long to. (But see comment below.) You do not know how the adoptee will react, as he has been calling someone else Mom all his life. You have to let the adoptee decide what to call you, and you might say so in the letter. However, I also would not sign it "your birth mother" or "your first mother" either...as that just feels wrong. I would avoid that entirely and see how things go, and just sign off with "All my love" or something like that, and your first name. You might go with your first name and then "your other mother." One of our readers, Von, however, loved that her first mother signed her letter "Mother"...I'd say this is totally up to you. Do what feels right in your heart. I chose the side of caution, but you may feel differently, and your feeling may be in response to what your child is hoping to read.
  • Include a photo. The adoptee is almost certainly never to have never seen a picture of anyone who looks like him. Even if she looks like the father, there will be some resemblance to you, the mother, and if you include a shot of you with another relative, there may be a resemblance to the other individual. If writing to a son, you could include a picture of yourself with your father or brother. Or the child's father. 
  • Most of all, write from the heart. 
So, here is the letter I might write today:



Dear Daughter--

I am struggling over how to begin this letter to someone I hope will let me back into her life. I say, "back into" because once we shared the most intimate of connections, when I was carrying you. I want you to know that though life has gone on and time has passed, you always have remained in my thoughts and prayers. I could never forget you, and the time around your birthday has always been difficult for me. I think about you especially then, hope you can feel my love, and worry that your life has not been a good one. I pray that it has, but whatever happened, I hope you will let me know you now.

from my backyard
You probably want to why you came to be surrendered for adoption--I hate even writing those words because the day I signed the papers was the saddest day of my life. I was less than a year out of college, and working on a newspaper in Rochester, New York, when your father and I became involved. He was the older, political columnist on The Democrat & Chronicle. He was also married with three children. From an Irish family closely connected to the Catholic Church, he was under tremendous family pressure to not divorce. Yet I want to add we were much in love, and he supported me throughout the pregnancy.

Being pregnant without a husband carried a great deal of shame back in 1966, more than I think it is possible to imagine today. I hope you will be able to understand what it was like in a different era. Before you were born, I quit my job, in fact, and had to go into hiding, more or less. The very few single women who kept their babies were scorned, and I did not have the strength or wherewithal to figure out how to care for you on my own. My parents did not have the financial means to help.

Forsythia was in bloom when you were born in April, and filled the streets as I was driven to the hospital, Strong Memorial. You were born around one-thirty in the afternoon on April 5, 1966, three or four weeks premature. As you weighed less than five pounds, you were put in an incubator for a week or so, and you were baptized Mary by the priest making rounds that day. It is my sorrow to tell you that I never saw you.

I grew up in Dearborn, Michigan, in a working class family, and they did not know about you then. My father has since died, but I did tell my mother, and my two brothers, a few years later. She was sad to hear the news and hopes to meet you one day, as do my brothers and their families. I am married to a good man now and have been for many years, and he too would like to meet you.  I never had another child.

After you were born, I found a job as a reporter in Albany (staying in Rochester was unthinkable), as this was what I had spent most of my life preparing for, beginning in high school as the editor of my high school newspaper. I have remained in journalism, becoming a magazine writer and editor in  New York City, and then, author. I have written poetry, but not lately. In short, journalism and writing has been my life. I've written about feminist issues, such as women in business and gender bias in the legal system.

I read fiction, keep up with the movies, love the ballet, and until arthritis crept up on me, was an avid jogger who ran in 5K races. I can still cycle however. My husband Tony and I are backyard bird watchers and modest gardeners.

I have fine dark blonde hair I've been high-lighting since high school; hazel-green eyes, and fair skin. I'm just under five-five and wish I could lose the ten pounds that I put on since I stopped running. I almost never wear jangly earrings, can't snap my fingers on my left hand, and can't carry a tune for more than three bars. The whole family is liberal politically, and follows politics avidly. I've enclosed a photograph of me and my mother. 

There's so much more to tell you and I hope you will let me do so in person. I've wanted to find you since the day I gave you up. I felt for the longest time I didn't have the right to search for you, but hoped you would find me. But lately I realized that you might be feeling the same way, and not reach out to me because you were waiting for me to find you! So here I am, afraid you will reject me, but praying you will want to know me. 

I know that I cannot go back and get back the years, but I hope that we can have the future, in whatever way you are prepared to let me be a part of your life. I don't want to interfere in what I pray has been a good relationship with your adoptive family, I don't want to interrupt your life, or cause any problems. I simply want to know you. No matter how you respond, know that I will always love you in my heart, and will always be sorry you had to be adopted and that I could not raise you.

With all my love,
lorraine, your other mother who has never forgotten you

18 comments:

  1. This is a beautiful, moving letter and thank you for making it available.

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  2. Hi Lorraine, as an adoptee who had 'the letter' and many more afterwards and then reunion, just a few points, since you asked.
    My own Mother signed her letter simply "Mother' which I found very moving and I would not like to have thought of her thinking she was my 'other mother'.She wasn't she was my only true Mother.
    My Mother was never out of my thoughts so therefore not out of my life for all the 50 years it took for reunion.She didn't need to ask to come back into it.Different perhaps for others.
    Birth details, weight, length, time of birth and place and some idea of how it was are very helpful and welcome if possible.Photos of course and details of father too.
    My Mother was not a complicated woman and her letter reflected that, it was honest and from her heart, the most important thing.

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  3. I was so blessed to be reunited through ISRR (Soundex). When they called me to say they had matched me with my son, I said, "what should I do? Write him a letter?" And the woman said, it would be better if you talked on the phone. She set that up for later that night, when we were both home from work. I was so nervous! She also gave me ideas of what to say and I learned later that she did for my son. Of course we wrote letters to each other after (this was before email). We met 10 days later.

    Lorraine, thank you for providing this sample for mothers who must write to their son/daughter before talking on the phone or meeting in person. It will help so many.

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  4. Von: You are right; I'm going back to add those details in the letter for all the people who will read this in the future.

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  5. May 5, 2011

    Three years after I lost my precious baby boy to a concealed/closed adoption--at the hands of a Mormon church lawyer (David McConkie helping Colleen Burnham of Children's Aid Society of Utah)--I wrote my son a l - o -n - g letter. Over a period of days this evolved into a short family history narrative.

    Since then I've realized many more things about this forlorn experience of my only child from my only pregnancy being pried away from me and him and me being cruelly broken up as a family. We WERE a family, of two, who loved each other deeply.

    Write from your maternal instincts. That's the one thing that neither the lawyers or social workers, judges or anybody else can destroy--when they rip our children away from us and hide them away from us in concealed/closed adoption, in my opinion--and that's our maternal instincts. We still think like a mother. Such is because we ARE a mother, even if they made us a childless mother.

    Tell your child the truth, regardless of the anguish you yourself endure. That's part of being a mom, to me, is enduring sorrow so your child does not. Not giving them the facts only prolongs their suffering of probing and searching until they get what they want, the truth, about the unfavorable circumstances surrounding their usually-illegitimate birth.

    How many times I've poured over law books crying, at the factual information I was studying, because the law was showing me what I already knew deep in my soul but couldn't bring myself to admit numbers many times. As your child's mother you're the only one who knows these kinds of things.

    Take what you've learned and couple it with the facts, then present it to your child. Give her the gift of wholeness. That's what our adopted-out kids want--so we never should deny them that--so as our adopted-out kids' natural moms we have responsibility to help them become whole and maybe heal if that's possible.

    Present your daughter with yourself as her natural mother giving her the truth. Then be courageous enough to let her decide. You may have to take up the rest of the whole situation before the Lord.

    God Speed To You Both,
    Kathy Caudle
    Natural Mother

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  6. I just wanted to thank you, Lorraine, for this guidance. My birthdaughter is now 18, and I feel that it is my time to do this. I don't know what, if anything, will come of it (or when), but I have been waiting for the moment for so long. I will take your suggestions to heart. Again, thank you.

    ~Julie

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  7. I guess as an adoptee...make sure that really want a relationship and if you aren't sure don't write the letter. The most devastating thing is when a birth parent walks away after they have been in your life for a year...it almost feels like rejection all over again.

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  8. monker1123:

    I am so sorry to hear about what happened. Maybe in time she will change. Take care of yourself. We can't control other people, we can only control ourselves.

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  9. I found this very helpful as i am in the middle of writting letters to my baby son who is nearly 3years old and my 3 daughetrs aged 5, 8, and 10 who were snatched away from me by social services in waltham forest in march 2010... its very difficult to know what to write but this has been a great help and thank u ..

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  10. thank you so much for posting this beautiful letter. i am so young and it has been such a struggle to convey my feelings properly. this post has helped incredibly as i prepare to write a letter to my own little girl.

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  11. Thanks, Lindsey, and good luck. You don't know what you are facing, or what she has come to believe about you, so write from your heart and the love will shine through.

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  12. Lorraine ,thanks for writing this letter to your child ,it was very emtionally for me but helped me write a letter to my son who was adopted at 4 days old he found me 0n 1/31/2010 and that was just overwheming to see his handsome face.I just finished my letter to him ,even thou it took me 2yrs to write it.thank you and God bless you

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  13. i am glad i came across your page i am writting my son a letter he was adopted when he was five and he will be13 this year i did not know how to go about writting a letter to him and i had no help exept from the lords guidance.they said to me they are going to put this letter in his folder i dont know anything and they said he will beable to read it when he gets his folder i dont know when that will be but i would like to say thank you and i am glad to hear everything work out when u wrote your letter to your daughter.

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  14. I am trying to decide what to write to my son/adoptive family. He turned 20 this year and I would love to send him a note, letting him know that I have never forgotten him. His birth father and I each wrote him a letter before he was born explaining why he was given up for adoption. Assuming his adoptive parents gave them to him, he has some pictures of me pregnant with him, of me and his birth father, as well as pictures of me with him and his adoptive family when I gave him to them. They have sent pictures over the years when I requested them, but it has been a little over 10 years since I last requested/sent anything. Not because I don't care but because live moves on and you have to move with it. I really just want to let him know that I have never forgotten him, that I did get to spend time with him before he went to his new parents, and that I am available for contact, etc. I also want to make sure he is happy and doing well. At age 9 he seemed to be doing great and his family always sent good pictures. Suggestions anyone?

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  15. This is one of the hardest things I'll ever have to do, but this letter is given into the future aspect and Im writing her when this happened in January so shes only 6 months old, granted I am 33. So I'm really lost now if someone could help me. I have no support at the moment. How would you write this and do you know if we are able to send in another letter in their folder or can it just be one? Thanks

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  16. I came across your letter today and advice and to be honest with you it sent chills up my spine. My name is Mindy and my husband and I married 4 years ago. At the beginning of our relationship, my husband and his family did not disclose to me their son had a child from a previous 8 month marriage. Throughout our wonderful marriage, this subject has always came up. Between the both of us, his parents and his friends all having their opinions but in the end wondering how his daughter was with her mother and adoptive father. A few weeks ago, beings I left my job of 10 years which was an 80 hour a week job, I realized a power above us gave me this new job in the location where his daughter lives for a reason. I started doing some research and for the first time really appreciated the social media world. I found his ex wife/the mother of his child and found out a lot of information that my husband did not tell me. I reached out to her in hopes for her side of the story. My husband and I spoke to an attorney and low and behold he did give his daughter up for adoption. The story thank god is pretty consistent between the both of them. They were young and he could not provide the child support the court ordered and the mother wanted to move out of state with another man who gracefully adopted his daughter. Throughout the past few weeks I have found myself in a very difficult situation with my husband and his family. Do we do nothing still? What is his daughter going to think when she starts searching for the truth? Why aren't we doing something about this? What is she going to think of me when she starts finding out the truth. So many people have their opinions but finally last night after weeks of fighting with my husband over this issue he has chose to bottle up the last 12 years, he said to me he wants to write a letter. With the tears in his eyes, I felt so proud of him and am thanking God that he put us in life together and that he is going to do something to change the situation. Last night, my husband said to me "I don't know what to say or what not to say Mindy" I said I don't know either... then today, just now, I find this advice and guidance someone else shared with their own daughter. I want to thank you again for sharing your story and what a blessing you have been to myself and my husband knowing there are others out there in the same situation. We are planning on drafting his letter this weekend and cannot be happier we have a path to take. Thank you again.

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  17. Thank you for writing. We hope this encourages others to be truthful, and know that it is never too late to open up about a secret child. I wish you all the luck in the world with reaching out.

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  18. Just wanted to say thank you for helping me finally be able to tell my oldest son who was adopted at 5 in 2015 the time we have been apart that I not once didn't think of him. I wish I could convey that I do not want interfer in his life nor be a burden and just want him to know mo matter the distance and time way y love for him has never changed
    I can't make up for all the times I wish I could have been a support or during difficult times to offer guidance, but to let him know I'll always be waiting and he always welcome in ly home and life. And that it's ok if he doesn't want that to.

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